Disclaimer: standard disclaimer applies.
A/N: There are some famous names and titles which I will be using throughout this story and which I will sometimes change or modify to better suit the plot. Fra Filippo was, for instance, a former friar and a Renaissance painter, but the book I have falsely attributed to him, does not exist. There is also no such thing as Corpus Mysterium or Secretum Secretorum. It's all made up. There is however a book called Three Books of Occult Philosophy which was written by Agrippa and which partly served as a prototype for Liber Mysteriorum.
Oh yeah, many thanks to everyone who took time to review this story! Sorry that I had to keep you waiting for so long.
CHAPTER 3
Mystery galore
Draco Apparated into the entrance hall of his luxurious mansion with a loud 'crack'. He dusted off his traveling cloak and slowly walked through the enfilade of dark abandoned rooms. A shadow passed over his pale face when his gaze fell upon the slip-covered furniture and curtained off windows. In the high-ceilinged hall he paused and leaned against the wall. He was tired.
Then, he sighed and pushed the doors before him open and entered the sitting-room. Still in the doorway, he froze and stared before him.
"What the-?" he stopped in the middle of the sentence.
On the silk-upholstered settee next to the extinguished fire-place sat a red-haired vixen, bearing an unmistakable expression of demonic fury on her otherwise pretty face. It was, as Draco noted with shock and anger, the one and only Ginevra Weasley.
"Where have you been?!" she rounded on him.
"None of your business," he muttered through gritted teeth, as he proceeded to plank himself on one of the arm-chairs.
"Well, it became my business the moment we set foot in Mr. Greycliffe's office! And I have a right to know where you have been all this time when you should have been in London, working on the bleeding project!"
"I was seeing to some urgent business on the Scilly Isles, if you really must know," he replied as calmly as ever. "And I don't remember inviting you to my house."
"You are the most irresponsible person I've ever met!" she exclaimed, ignoring his last remark. "You have no consideration for others whatsoever! You dare to cancel our appointment, which I took seriously and was preparing for, and then I don't hear anything from you for more than a week, because you're too busy having fun on some ruddy island! What we are entrusted to do by Professor Dumbledore is of utmost importance and I suggest you treat this mutter as such!"
Her nostrils were flaring and her chest was heaving. An infuriating delay in work, coupled with his carelessness, maddened her even more.
Draco looked her over lazily from head to toe, taking in her lovely red hair and a tight-fitting cloak of surprisingly good quality.
"We've wasted too much time. We should get started on the book," Ginny stated, still glaring at him.
With that she emptied her bag on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa. Draco had no choice but to follow.
The contents of Ginny's bag formed a pile of reference books, notepads and loose scraps of parchment. Liber Mysteriorum lay however in a separate slip-cover. Ginny took it out and put it on the table together with the rest of the books.
"Have you done anything yet?" Draco asked, scanning some of her notes.
"Yes, I have, as a matter of fact," she replied coldly. "I've done some research to have a clear view of what we are dealing with. But I haven't worked on The Book yet, since we're supposed to be doing it together."
Draco was about to say that she wouldn't be able to do it on her own anyway, because she didn't know any Latin, but refrained from abuse. Instead he just nodded wearily.
"Well, I thought you needed to be as informed, so I made a short summary for you. Here," she thrust her notes in his hand.
He took them from her and, sighing inwardly, made himself read, though he'd rather take a nap and forget all about Ginny Weasley and the bloody book. Ginny waited for him to finish and when he was done, she opened Liber Mysteriorum on the first page.
The yellowed page had a slightly musty smell to it. In the upper left corner of it was a bright illustration of a mage in star-spangled robes, with his wand drawn. His long hair and beard were grey and his face was lined. A simultaneous thought occurred to both Ginny and Draco that the wizard on the picture looked very much like the late Professor Dumbledore to whom they owned the honour of working together.
The passage below was easily discernable and Ginny read it aloud.
Magick is a faculty of wonderfull vertue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound Contemplation of most secret things, together with the nature, power, quality, substance, and vertues thereof, as also the knowledge of whole nature, and it doth instruct us concerning the differing, and agreement of things amongst themselves, whence it produceth its wonderfull effects, by uniting the vertues of things through the application of them one to the other, and to their inferior sutable subjects, joyning and knitting them together thoroughly by the powers, and vertues of the superior Bodies.
Beside the passage, in the margin, the same hand had scribbled: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa - Three Books of Magick, bk. 1, chap. 34, p. 246.
Ginny stared at these words and then reread the passage. She frowned.
Draco looked at her across the table. Absorbed in thought, she was twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. Her cheeks were still coloured from the argument they had had earlier. His eyes moved across a thin sheen of the lip-gloss that covered her puffy lips. With amusement he realized that Ginny was an attractive girl. He made a note of it for future, in case their research got too boring and he'd want to have a little fun. He might as well kill two birds with one stone.
"This doesn't make sense!" Ginny uttered at last.
"Huh?" Draco shook his head and stared at her. "What were you saying?"
"Read this!" she ordered and pointed to two short lines in the margin of the page.
"I already have," Draco replied coldly.
"Well, haven't you noticed anything unusual?" she was wide-eyed with surprise. "Urgh, of course, you haven't!"
Draco didn't quite like that 'of course' bit. Was she implying that he was thick?!
"I suppose, it's taken from a book written by Agrippa," he gritted, "a famous 15th century
magician."
"Precisely!" Ginny exclaimed again. "A 15th century magician! How could Fra Filippo, who, I must remind you, lived in the 12th century, have known Agrippa, let alone have read his book?!"
Now Draco got it too. He stared at her, open-mouthed. And that was a bad sign. Already Ginny proved that she was much brighter and more sharp-witted and he desperately needed to come up with a smart answer in order to at least measure up to her.
"That can only mean that he could foretell the future," he blurted out.
"Hmm, I think you are right," Ginny nodded thoughtfully. "That explains a lot."
Draco's spirits rose and he beamed proudly. He moved the book closer to himself and turned the page. When he read the first sentence on the top of the next page, he felt once again that he was gaining advantage over Ginny. For the words said:
Saeculorum novus nascitur ordo
Swelling with pride and smirking, Draco waited for Ginny to ask him what the words meant, since she didn't speak any Latin. Ginny didn't keep him waiting for too long and looked at him questioningly.
"Well, Mr. Polyglot, care to explain what it means?" she asked sarcastically.
"It means 'a new time begins'," he replied vainly.
"Very interesting," Ginny murmured and proceeded to read the strophe that followed, which, she noted gratefully, was written in English.
Ten cranes guard the door under the stars.
The white and the red rose will travel
To the city of bridges before the sky turns black.
The waxing crescent will end the war.
Neither of them understood what it meant. Ginny frowned and Draco looked at her hopefully.
"Any ideas?" he ventured to ask.
Ginny shook her head and repeated the lines in a low whisper.
"I don't know what it means, but it sounds very familiar," she said at last.
Draco raised an eyebrow. "I think it's complete and utter nonsense. I mean, the white and the red rose? Ten cranes? That friar was seriously off his rocker."
"You're right, the words don't make any sense. But there is something about this quatrain, it…," she broke off. "Wait, it's a quatrain…a quatrain…and it narrates the events that are about to happen…," she paused dramatically and then exclaimed: "It's a prophecy!"
"A prophecy?" Draco echoed disbelievingly.
Ginny was gesticulating emphatically. "Precisely! And if this is a prophecy and written in the form of a quatrain, then it must have been written by Nostradamus!"
Draco burst out laughing. "That charlatan?"
"He wasn't a charlatan!" Ginny replied passionately. "His prophecies always came true! It all fits! Michel Nostradamus was a notorious 15th century seer. Again, I can't help notice that Fra Filippo had a certain affinity with the 15th century wizards. Nostradamus wrote quatrains in which he
prophesized major events in the future, like wars and calamities. And we've established that Fra Flippo was a seer too. I wonder how it's all connected."
"But you're forgetting that Michel Nostradamus never wrote his prophecies in English!" Draco said. "They were mostly in Old French or Latin and they always rhymed."
"Fra Filippo could have translated it in English," she retorted.
"Why would he do that?"
"Oh, I don't know!" Ginny replied venomously. "Maybe he wanted to make it easier for us, since we don't speak Old French?"
"Ha-ha. Funny," he said sourly.
Ginny rolled her eyes at him and struggled to read the next portion of the text.
Accipe quam primum, brevis est occasion lucri.
Respue, quod non es.
Certum est et inevitabile fatum.
Aut amat aut odit mulier, nil est tertium.
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.
Urbs antiqua ruit multos dominate per annos.
Mea!
"Well, what does it say?" she asked impatiently.
"I'm afraid it's just another piece of gibberish," he sighed.
"Let's hear it," Ginny urged.
A little reluctantly, Draco translated aloud:
Strike while iron is hot.
Reject that what you are not, in other words be yourself or be what you really are.
Fate is definite and unavoidable.
A woman either loves or hates, there's no third option.
I can't live with you, but I can't live without you either.
An old city that ruled for so many years will collapse.
Hurry!
"It's not a poem," Ginny said, looking utterly perplexed.
"Yeah, I've guessed that much," Draco smirked.
"All right. Let's just try to analyze this. From what I gathered it's not a poem, since it has no rhyme or meter. There are seven lines, which show no connection whatsoever. Am I right so far?"
Draco nodded.
"Do these Latin aphorisms ring a bell?" she asked suddenly.
"What do you mean?" Draco blinked.
"You're the one who studied Latin, not me!" Ginny sighed exasperatedly. "Maybe there is something peculiar about them. A special meaning, perhaps?"
Draco shook his head resolutely. Ginny sagged in her armchair and looked disappointed.
"Ok, let's think about this again," she persisted.
"Why don't we just skip it and move on?" Draco suggested with a tinge of annoyance in his voice.
"We've already skipped a quatrain, remember? And we haven't gotten far with this book yet. All we know, or rather assume, is that Fra Filippo was a seer and that the quatrain was written by Nostradamus. We can't afford to miss out anything. Let's just try to analyze it again."
Sighing, Draco rose from the sofa. He approached a niche in the farthest wall and poured himself some wine. Without turning around to face Ginny, he asked: "Do you think he did this on purpose?"
Ginny tore her gaze from the book and stared at him. "What? Who did what on purpose?"
"Dumbledore," Draco murmured. "I reckon he made us do this for a reason."
"Duh, that's a new one. He obviously had a reason in mind. Why? What's wrong?"
"Well, I can't stop thinking about it. I think it's pointless. This book is full of nonsense."
"Are you saying you want to quit?" Ginny's eyes narrowed dangerously. "We've just started!"
Draco returned with two glasses of wine and put one of them in front of Ginny. "No, I'm not quitting. I just see no point."
"Yeah, whatever. Let's just focus on this rebus, shall we? I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out."
Draco shrugged and took another swig.
Ginny began to copy the Latin sentences into her notepad. She scribbled furiously and then crossed things out. She even tried to reverse the words, or make anagrams, but to no avail. Still, she didn't give up and started from the beginning.
Draco sat slumped in his plush arm-chair, weary, his head heavy like a cannonball. It felt so heavy that it seemed to him that his neck could not support its weight anymore and any moment now it would snap in two. He leaned back and cautiously put his head down on the antimacassar that had been crocheted by his mother, back when things were different.
He craved sleep, but he didn't want to chase Ginny away, for then he would be left alone with the memories of his journey, his troubling thoughts. So instead he listened to Ginny's voice mumbling the results of her guesswork, letting her words penetrate his throbbing head.
She was copying the third line, when she stopped abruptly and stared at the page before her.
"I think I got it," she whispered inaudibly.
"You know what it means?" Draco suddenly looked interested.
Ginny drew something on the page and gave it to him. "Have a look."
Accipe quam primum, brevis est occasion lucri.
Respue, quod non es.
Certum est et inevitabile fatum.
Aut amat aut odit mulier, nil est tertium.
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.
Urbs antiqua ruit multos dominate per annos.
Mea!
"It's an acrostic!" she smiled contentedly. "Acrostic is a series of lines, usually in a form of a poem, in which the first letters in each line form a name or a word. If you read all seven letters in sequence, you'll get the word arcanum."
"Arcanum? That's a nice way to put it," Draco snorted.
"I don't quite remember what it means. Care to enlighten me?"
"Arcanum means 'mystery'. It's also another word for 'elixir'," he explained.
"Why…," Ginny began to say, but was cut off.
"Hold on a second," Draco interrupted quickly. "I have an idea."
He rummaged in a pile of books and quills and grabbed Ginny's copy of The Complete Magical Encyclopaedia. He turned over the pages feverishly. When he found the right page, he handed the book to her. Overtaken by curiosity, Ginny read the passage.
"…In alchemy, the Grand Arcanum describes the secret of the Philosopher's Stone. The colloquial name for the Philosopher's Stone is The Great Red Elixir. An elixir was a substance believed to be able to change base metals into gold. It was also believed by some to be able to prolong life, thus making a person immortal. For this reason another name was coined for the Philosopher's Stone - elixir vitae (elixir of life)."
Ginny's eyes widened. She looked at the poem in the middle of the page and then back at Draco.
"You don't really think…"
"I never said anything," he replied shortly and stared at her for a long time. "But it does seem very probable."
"This is incredible!" she whispered. "They were right after all! I think we have a key to the formula of the Philosopher's Stone!"
They grinned at each other.
While Ginny was contemplating what she had just heard, her eyes registered dark shadows under Draco's eyes that made him look older and yet for some reason very appealing. Rough bristly stubble covered his cheeks and Ginny wondered what it would feel like to the touch.
Then she abruptly pulled herself up sharp. Was she out of her mind, fantasizing about Draco Malfoy's pulchritude?
'Our relationship is strictly business-like,' she told herself. 'We are coparceners. Merlin, I hate that word. We are bound by a business agreement. Nothing more, nothing less. Nobody said I have to like him, right?'
All the while Draco was thinking about how beautiful Ginny looked with her eyes glowing, all happy and excited about their discovery.
Ginny was the first one to avert her eyes. She turned back to the book and leafed through it.
"Erm, where were we?" she mumbled.
"Arcanum," he said. "I think he meant the Philosopher's Stone."
"Oh yeah, isn't it what people used to believe? That Liber Mysteriorum contained an encrypted message on how to make the Philosopher's Stone?"
"Yes, but I don't really believe in it. It's just a rumour."
"Whatever," Ginny replied stubbornly. "Let's be more optimistic, shall we?"
She grabbed Liber Mysteriorum and observed closely the small drawings that followed. One of them was a small drawing of a scarlet rose.
"See?" Ginny exclaimed with an expression of acute satisfaction on her face. "I was right! The red rose is an alchemical symbol that stands for the Philosopher's Stone."
Excitedly, she rubbed her hands together. Draco looked over at Ginny and shook his head.
"I can't believe I haven't thought of it before," Ginny went on. "These are all symbols that stand for something. It makes sense now!
"It does?" Draco asked, for her deductions totally escaped him.
"Of course. Suppose this riddle is a key to the Philosopher's Stone. Suppose it's all true. Then this picture here," she pointed to the drawing of a dragon, "stands for hydrogen. See, all alchemists used symbols to encode different stages of transmutation of metals. Dragon was used as the symbol for hydrogen, which is used in making the Stone. And this," this time she pointed to the picture of a cave, "is a symbol of a crucible."
"And what's this?" Draco asked about the last picture, which depicted a grey-feathered crane.
Ginny shrugged and then picked a book from the pile that read Ars symbolica by Arnold Dempsey.
"Let's see," she murmured as her eyes roved the pages. "Aha! The ancient Egyptians used the crane as a symbol of the astronomer because of high flight. Its astrological name is 'Grus'."
"Wasn't the crane mentioned in one of the poems?" Draco asked thoughtfully. He got hold of the Liber Mysteriorum again to find the poem. Then he read out loud:
Ten cranes guard the door under the stars.
The white and the red rose will travel
To the city of bridges before the sky turns black.
The waxing crescent will end the war.
"So 'ten cranes' means 'ten astronomers'?" Ginny exclaimed in surprise. "And if the red rose stands for the Philosopher's Stone, does it mean that someone will travel with it to…the city of bridges?"
"And what does the white rose stand for?"
Ginny shrugged. "I don't know. But at least I know now that this is somehow linked to astronomy. Or astrology, if you wish. Back in the Middle Ages people used to think that it was the same thing."
Draco took stock of her. "You are quite smart, aren't you?" he asked, sounding greatly surprised, as if he had just discovered that Ginny could fly without a broom.
Flabbergasted, Ginny coloured slightly. She was unaccustomed to his compliments and couldn't help wondering what made him say so. She also realized that the animosity between them began to disappear and though she still thought he was a cruel bully, she had to admit that the day that they spent in each other's company wasn't so bad at all. In any event, she was not prepared to give in to his charms just yet.
"Um, can I use your bathroom?" she asked, for she couldn't bear his stare any longer.
"Sure," he said, breaking the gaze. "At the end of the corridor turn left, take another turn to the left and then the fifth door on the right will be the bathroom."
Ginny quickly ran to the bathroom and once she was inside, she sank on the marble floor and buried her head in her hands. Her cheeks were glowing and a goofy smile played on her lips. She didn't know what intoxicated her more, the seasoned wine or the mellow timbre of his voice.
They were not becoming friends, were they? No parleys and no hatchets buried, right? He must have spiked her drink, for such a ludicrous thought would never have occurred to her had she been sober.
Or could they perhaps let bygones be bygones, that is, at least for the duration of their research? Would she, could she forgive him? It would after all be sensible and would undoubtedly facilitate their collaboration…But no, it was far too insane a notion to accept, and so she dismissed it with utter resolution. That done, she continued despising Draco Malfoy with every fibre of her being.
Very confident, she exited the bathroom and started walking down the corridor, back to the sitting-room. Just like she imagined, the house had a somewhat lugubrious air to it. Everything looked unused and abandoned and she doubted if any human being had set foot in this part of the mansion in the last few years.
Suddenly, the corridor divided and she wasn't sure which way she should go, as she hardly paid attention to the surroundings on her way to the bathroom. She decided to go left, down a narrow corridor. She took a turn and nearly tripped on the leg of a massive chest-of-drawers that was occupying the dark corner. She examined it slowly and discovered quite a collection of gauds on its dusty surface.
She took one of them to see what it was. It looked like a usual trinket box with a silver decoration on a mother-of-pearl background. She lifted the lid and a slow, mournful music, resembling a funeral hymn issued from within its depths. Suddenly, the dirge was over and the box emitted a shrill, bray-like cry. Frightened, Ginny snapped the lid shut. She quickly put it back and walked away.
Mortified, she now also realized that the walls of the corridors were lined with gravures of ugly and dangerous-looking beasts, mostly indricotheres, mammoths and dire wolves. As she walked on, her eyes fell upon a painting in a massive gilded frame. It depicted an ashet with a severed human head on it. A few gobbets were cut off on the left side, mutilating the face beyond recognition.
Ginny felt nausea wash over her and she hurried forward. The next thing she encountered was a silver platter with elaborate decoration of a bird of prey picking at a rabbit. The acids in her stomach were already making their way up and, fearing a sight of another gory artifact, she swiftly took a turn, down another corridor.
As she was passing, a door on her right suddenly opened a creak. Ginny stopped and looked at it curiously. Then she pushed it slightly. Squeaking, the door gave in and she found herself in a small room with a low ceiling. The room was dark and she lit her wand. When she saw the inside of the room, she gasped and nearly dropped her wand.
She stumbled upon Narcissa Malfoy's parlour. Gabardine portieres were drawn, permitting no light inside. There was a thin layer of dust on the cherry wood furniture, and Ginny realized that this room had not been used or visited since its owner had left it for good.
The curiosity was almost overwhelming, as she studied the knick-knacks in the room - an elegant assortment of opals, ivory and silver. She ran her fingers over small obsidian and porcelain figurines on the griseous mantelpiece, over tassels and bolsters, scattered all over the sofa that was upholstered with burgundy crushed velvet. She picked out a tune on the piano, just to hear what it sounded like.
On the desk, Narcissa's handicraft basket was still unpacked, with a hodgepodge of thimbles and bodkins laid out, as if she took a break for a moment and was going to come back. She wondered if Draco came here often, lay on this settee and maybe talked quietly to his mother's things. Imagining that she was there. She was suddenly overcome with pity for him, and that surprised her. That wasn't something she did out of her own volition. For the life of her, she could never imagine how he could still live in this mansion that was about as cozy as a burial vault, and where everything was painfully remindful of his deceased parents. One can, of course, seal off the rooms, but one can't shut off the memories. But now she understood. He welcomed these memories. They were all he had left, just like this house.
She gave the room another glance and then walked out, closing the door behind her and leaving her sympathy and pity for Malfoy behind that door. No truce or armistice, remember?
She found her way back to the sitting room, where Draco sat on the sofa, bent over a book. She ignored a mighty tug in her chest, where her heart was, as if it were simply a skipped systole, and settled on the sofa beside him.
"Found anything interesting?" she asked, pulling the book towards her.
"Actually, I did," he said without looking up. "Have a look at this."
Ginny bent over the page that he was showing her and saw the picture of the same bearded wizard in the star-spangled robes right in the middle. He was holding an open book in his hands with a strange inscription on it: seititne lacigam.
"You know I don't speak Latin," Ginny said, irritated.
"It's not Latin. It's English," Draco retorted.
Ginny looked at him as if he was addle-brained.
"Then it's the kind of English that I don't understand."
"Because you need this," he explained and produced a small mirror from his pocket.
Ginny frowned, but took it from him. Intuitively, she brought it close to the page and looked at the reflection. Now the words read in perfect English: Magical Entities. Ginny's eyes grew wider.
"Magical entities? But what does it mean?"
"I looked it up in one of the encyclopedias and I found this:
On the Magical Entities is one of the most enigmatic tractates on a variety of magical beasts in the wizarding world, as well as some forms of half-animal life such as werewolves. It was written in 1199 by Fra Filippo, shortly before his death. His main goal was to bring awareness about these things that his contemporaries had little knowledge about.
Though this tractate is written in common English, being the first document of this kind not to be written in Latin and moreover not encoded, many believed for some reason that this tractate contained some 'keys' to understanding the higher forms of magic, often forbidden. It was therefore often called The Key or The Keys by those who attempted to find something in the text that would lead them beyond the original meaning. On the Magical Entities is now known by the name of the Zenatti manuscript, after the person who had been known to own it last, Anselmo Zenatti. It is therefore sometimes referred to as Le chiavi, the Italian equivalent of The Keys. It is believed to have been lost in the fire that destroyed the Mancini Library in 1523.
"Hang on. You mean he hid a clue inside his other work?" Ginny asked at last.
"Yes, I think that this is a very explicit allusion to the tractate. To solve this, we need Fra Filippo's tractate," Draco said, as his mouth curled in a half-smile. An idea occurred to him. He had an old acquaintance that might just be of service.
Suddenly, they were interrupted by a thundering sound, coming from the other wing of the mansion, as if someone dropped a four-poster bed with a baldachin down the stairwell.
There was a grimace of immense displeasure on Draco's face, as he squinted in the direction of the possible source of the sound. Ginny guessed that whoever was creating havoc would get it hot.
"Well," she said quickly. "It's rather late and I'm tired. Why don't we continue in the weekend?"
Draco nodded wearily and insisted on walking with her to the entrance hall. Down the dark corridors they went, and Ginny thought to herself that she couldn't have possibly spent a more enjoyable day.
Abruptly she stopped and looked around. Draco was right behind her. He stood much closer to her than she had anticipated, and she took a few steps back.
"I'll be off then," she said curtly, and with a swirl she Disapparated.